Consider This from NPR - After The Balloon: Where US-China Relations Go Next

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

China and the US were supposed to hold diplomatic talks over the weekend. Instead they sparred over a Chinese balloon that entered American airspace before it was shot down. Where do relations between Washington and Beijing go from here?This wasn't the first time a Chinese surveillance balloon flew into into U.S. airspace. NPR's Greg Myre talks us through past incidents.Then we speak with Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia Pacific Studies at Cornell University, about where U.S. and China relations now stand.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Chase Doak was getting ready to leave his office in Billings, Montana on Wednesday when he looked out the window. And I just spotted this white circle in the sky. It caught my attention because it was still broad daylight and I knew that the stars couldn't be out. He ran outside to his car to grab his camera along with his most powerful lens. And then he started snapping photos of the mysterious object. What it looked like was

a tiny moon that was sort of in the middle of an eclipse is the best way I could describe it. That tiny moon in the sky turned out to be a very big deal. We begin tonight with the breaking headline late today. The Pentagon briefing reporters, just before we came on the air, saying they are now tracking a suspected Chinese spy balloon

hovering over the northern U.S. It was spotted earlier this week on Thursday over Montana. Today, a lot of people over Missouri, Kansas City, St. Louis saw it. And tonight, we think we know where it is. China's foreign affairs ministry eventually confirmed that the balloon was indeed from China. But they called it a, quote, civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes. And they claim this one had merely accidentally gone off course. U.S. officials rejected that description. They said they knew it was a surveillance balloon used to collect information from sensitive sites. Now, this was all playing out ahead of a planned diplomatic trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing. The trip was seen as an opportunity for China

and the U.S. to ease tensions between them. But Blinken decided to call it off at the last minute. China's decision to fly a surveillance balloon over the continental United States is both unacceptable and irresponsible. That's what this is about. It's a violation of our sovereignty. It's a violation of international law. And then over the weekend, a U.S. fighter jet shot the balloon down just off the South Carolina coast. Here's President Biden speaking to reporters on Saturday. When I was briefed on the balloon, I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down. It successfully took it down. And I want to compliment our aviators who did it.

And we'll have more to report on. China called it an overreaction by the United States. And the Chinese Defense Ministry said that they reserve the right to use, quote, any necessary means in response. Consider this. The relationship between the U.S. and China just got more fraught, right when it looked like there was an opportunity to ease tensions.

So where do Beijing and Washington go from here? From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, February 6th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Monday, February 6th. It's Consider This from NPR. Judging from all the attention given to that Chinese surveillance balloon that flew into the U.S. airspace last week, it would be easy to assume that something like that had never happened before. But, you know, in reality, it has at least four other times in recent years. My colleague Juana Summers spoke to NPR National Security Correspondent

Greg Myrie about that. So several Navy and Coast Guard ships are still looking for the remnants of the balloon that was shot down with a missile on Saturday afternoon just off the coast of South Carolina. It's about six miles offshore, relatively shallow water, less than 50 feet deep, and the Navy is using unmanned subs in the cold Atlantic Ocean to look for this debris, particularly key equipment like sensors and other high-tech devices. And what does the U.S. national security community hope to learn here? Well, the U.S. says it's already learned quite a bit just by tracking the Chinese balloon for a week before it was shot down. Now, General Glenn

Van Hurk, he's the NORAD commander, the guy in charge of air defenses for North America. He spoke about this this afternoon, and here's how he put it. This gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed. And I think you'll see in the future that that time frame was well worth its value to collect. Okay, so let's talk now about those previous incursions by Chinese balloons. What do we now know about that? It's happened four times in recent years, three times during the Trump administration, once during the Biden administration,

General Van Herk acknowledged that the U.S. security community did not know about these incursions as they were taking place. It was only after the fact the U.S. intelligence community did some forensics and pieced together what had happened. Again, here's General Van Herk. We did not detect those threats. And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. The intel community, after the fact, made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transited North America. And Juana, he didn't provide additional details on how the intelligence community pieced this together, but the incursions were believed to be brief, unlike this most recent one, which lasted for a week. OK, lots of new information there. But Greg, how likely is that to change or shape the political back and forth that we've been seeing and hearing? Well, I guess we can hope that it will inform the debate about how these episodes were handled in the past. These previous incursion, which happened during both of Trump and Biden administrations, were not known at the time. So

just to state the obvious, this information did not make it up the military chain of command, and let alone make it to the White House. Last question, does the U.S. now feel that it has a good understanding of the Chinese balloon program? Well, at the White House, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said the U.S. was aware in general terms of this Chinese balloon program when the Biden administration took office. But the one big unanswered question is why did the Chinese do this in such an obvious way? Chinese espionage is very sophisticated, but this was very clumsy and clunky. The Chinese knew a large balloon would be detected. You know, perhaps one of the goals was to see how the U.S. would react to this kind of provocation. And I think we have an answer.

It's created a partisan feud in this country, and it certainly increased friction between the U.S. and China. Well, for more context, we're going to be joined now by Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University. She's also a former senior policy advisor to the U.S. State Department. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me. So what do you make so far of this whole controversy over the Chinese balloon and the U.S. decision to shoot it down? First, I think it's really unfortunate. The timing in particular of this event meant that

Secretary Blinken postponed indefinitely his trip to Beijing, which was even aimed at diffusing some of the tensions and putting a so-called floor under the relationship. Beyond that, I think it's, you know, kind of emblematic of where we are in the relationship, where there are activities that we are mutually doing to each other that both of us find pretty alarming. But the actual extent of the threat has, unfortunately, some cases, you know, and this in one in particular, blown wildly out of proportion, if you'll forgive me for using the word that. Well, before Secretary Blinken canceled his planned visit to Beijing, as you mentioned, how would you have characterized US-China relations? I would say that we're in a pretty steep downward spiral, which really began under the Trump administration, something that the Biden administration inherited and really characterized

by a sort of tit for tat action reaction cycle, where each of know, Beijing, Washington, trying to really out-compete the other to get a leg up and ensure that we're not vulnerable, you know, to each other. And so I would say that coming out of the meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Biden at the G20 summit in Bali last fall, there was really an interest in, I think, on both sides in seeing a little bit more stability in their relationship, recognizing that even as the two sides compete, that, you know, a conflict or crisis is in neither side's interest, particularly as we both have pretty severe domestic challenges to overcome. And then, you know, a lot of domestic investments for the long term and plenty of common challenges that we'd like to work together on. So that was the momentum, so to speak,

coming out of Bali. And this meeting really was to try to, you know, push forward there. Then it was derailed by the public firestorm over this balloon, which, you know, the timing was really bad, frankly. And I think the Chinese side blundered into this with their balloon. Well, can we talk about the rhetoric surrounding this balloon? Because after the balloon was shot down by a US fighter jet, the Chinese Defense Ministry said that they reserve the right to use, quote, any necessary means in response. What's your assessment of that language from China? Is it more just posturing? is that a real threat to the U.S.? What's your sense? I think it is somewhere between posturing and a specific threat,

because this incident isn't over. There's going to be the remains, the wreckage, there's going to be a lot, I think, here that the Chinese side may feel the need to respond to, and that's even in advance of Representative McCarthy going to Taiwan, et cetera. And so I think that they do. You know, I think one of the risks here is that the Chinese side, for domestic reasons of their own, you know, feels pressure to respond, you know, to the shoot down of their surveillance balloon. And it's not like we don't do a lot of survey, close in surveillance, you know, near China. And so I think there's a very real risk that they, maybe not, I don't think they're going to shoot down one of our planes, but nonetheless, they could do a lot more. And we're already having seen that tick up, a lot more

close-in harassment, unsafe encounters, really designed to show their own domestic audience in China that, you know, China is not going to just like take this one on the chin. Right. Well, as you mentioned, all of this is happening as tensions between the two countries are mounting. The U.S. is strengthening its presence in the South Pacific. The U.S. just announced an agreement with the Philippines to expand American military presence there. Tell me, how does that piece, military presence in the South Pacific, fit in with everything else that's going on between the U.S. and China at this point?

I would say that it fits well into the broader narrative that the Chinese side perceives of the United States seeking to contain China's rise, not just in the military domain through these sort of counterbalancing alliances, but also across a variety of domains, including economic and technological increasingly. So these are, I think, for the Chinese side of a piece, and they really confirm Chinese suspicions. The United States is, you know, seeking to do whatever it takes to prevent China from continuing to become kind of a modern great power capable of, you know, matching the United States on the world stage.

You mentioned that bulking up the U.S. military presence in the South Pacific may only confirm China's suspicions that the U.S. is trying to prevent China from matching the U.S.'s status on the world stage. What is the U.S.'s explanation for why it feels it's necessary to increase its military presence in that region? That's a really good question. And it's critical here to note that I think the U.S. military feels that it is, in light of China's rapidly growing military capabilities, particularly the ability to take out American aircraft carriers with these long-range missiles, that the United States military really needs to pursue a much more distributed defense

posture across the region. And that means having more mobile, smaller units that are capable, you know, aren't going to be sunk, you know, in the first hours of a potential conflict, for example, over Taiwan. And so this is an important part of what the U.S. kind of theory of the case as regards deterrence in the Asia-Pacific. That said, you know, I and colleagues have argued that deterrence is not just a matter of having, you know, a big military stick. It's also about making sure that China knows that if it doesn't escalate, that the United States isn't going to exploit that posture to push forward on things that China views as really existentially threatening, including, for example, Taiwan independence. At this point, do you see a real path forward for building trust between these two countries, or at least a way to decrease tensions between the U.S.

and China? I would agree that this incident and the outcry has made it all the harder to find that pathway forward, which was already pretty narrow and shrinking. But it also underscores the stakes here, that if we can't even, you know, manage a balloon, which the Pentagon assessed posed no military or even intelligence threat above and beyond what their low Earth orbit satellites could accomplish, then it suggests that, you know, we are really collectively, you know, in a very bad place for managing a potentially more serious incident. And so I think that a pathway still exists, but it will really require, I think, a great deal of, you know, political courage, frankly, on both sides, and imagination to recognize that the current

trajectory is one that will leave us worse off, in a greater danger of an avoidable crisis or even a military conflict. And it really requires, I think, reciprocal steps on both sides to begin to not only talk about principles to manage a relationship, but actually begin to think about what are the sets of behaviors that are, you know, increasing the danger on both sides, and that if done, ratcheted back and kind of in a reciprocal fashion, could really bolster our collective security without necessarily coming at the expense of defense and deterrence. That was Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of government at Cornell University and a former senior policy advisor to the U.S. State Department. It's Consider This from NPR.

I'm Elsa Chang. This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. IU makes bold investments in the future of bioscience and cybersecurity, cultivates visionary work in the arts and humanities, and prepares students to become global citizens by teaching more languages than any other university in the country. Indiana University. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu.